Chapter 77: The Appeal of a Ball-Gag

“Oh my gawd just make it end,” Shannon muttered, holding her temples in her fingers. Out in the river, the barghest was in the middle of committing arson in front of a crowd of curious—and snickering—outdoorsmen. “This is a nightmare.” The last two days of dancing to the barghest’s inane, stupid whims as he doggedly pursued his goal to pointlessly set millions of dollars on fire had been seared in her memory as, quite possibly, the worst two days of her life. Worse than getting shot and operated on without anesthetic, for sure.

“On the plus side, ,” Tl'oghk'etnaeyen said, as the barghest lit the floating monstrosity and the first burst of flames roared towards the sky, “At least it will be over soon.”

At least it would be over soon. Then Shannon caught herself repeating the feylord’s suggestion with a mental twitch. “Stop doing that,” she muttered.

“Can’t,” the feylord replied, for the thousandth time. Which was true, he couldn’t. Maybe. Dammit.

“I can’t handle much more of this crap,” Shannon said, having to turn away from the column of flames before she lost her mind. “A month ago, I was making fourteen bucks an hour as a nurse’s assistant, and he’s out there burning like two million dollars like it’s pocket change, just poof. Seriously. Like two million. For a stranger.”

“Historically, Odinsons have a propensity to get weirdly attached to people and things,” the feylord said, giving a commiserating nod as he continued to watch the flames. “They’re much like very small children that way.”

“I bet he never had to work a day in his life,” she muttered. She did a quick mental calculation, then decided she didn’t want to know how many hours it would have taken her to acquire that much wealth working at her last job wiping hardened shit from demented old men’s hairy assholes. “Oh man. I feel like I’m gonna puke. Yep, gonna puke. I’m hyperventilating.” She grabbed the feylord by his furry shoulder and leaned toward him to get away from the flames eating approximately four percent of her net wealth. “Talk to me about something else,” she said into his dog-guised face. “Anything else.”

“Anything, eh?” A glint of mischievousness flickered in his brown doggy eyes.

“Anything,” she said, chancing another glance over her shoulder. As the flames leapt higher, consuming the luxury shops’ distinctive jewelry bags, Shannon groaned and looked away again before she was overcome with the urge to grab the nearby fire extinguisher and march out there to put an end to the carnage. “Seriously, I can’t watch. There’s gonna be a molten nugget of gold on the bottom of that creek bigger than my leg. Distract me. Quick.”

“Gold is just a rock, if you think about it.” Then he cocked his head. “Though a very pretty rock that can be made into such exquisite things…” He glanced back at her with a raised doggy brow. “In fact, it’s rumored that the Lady of the Wind Clan has a set of golden dildos numerous enough to fill an entire room.”

Shannon groaned. “Golden dildos?! Who would use a golden dildo?! That’s like trying to shake hands with a cheese grater.”

The closest fisherman—a ruggedly handsome, good-looking guy with a square jaw and a week’s worth of heavy brown stubble—glanced in her direction and held up a beer in tentative greeting, grinning at her quizzically over the open bottle. He was only standing a couple feet away, facing the blaze, and it was clear he thought she was talking to him, since, gee, who would be talking to a dog about dildos? Petrified, Shannon hid her face with an embarrassed hand and avoided eye contact, instead turning her attention back to her ‘dog’. “Oh my gawd can this day get any worse?” Her whole body was starting to shake with indignity that she was essentially enabling a monster to burn two million dollars’ worth of fancy jewelry because he had a man-crush on a waiter. “Björn better help me find Masaaki after this or I’m de-nutting him.”

“Barghests are good candidates for de-nutting,” the feylord said idly. Then he shrugged and added, “But they can also hunt a hummingbird through a busy city in the middle of the night with a ten day late start. He can find your yatagarasu.”

“He better,” she grumbled. “Or his testicles are forfeit.” She groped at the air with a cupped fist and clenched, hard, channeling her intense frustration from enduring the last two days of Viking neuroses in order to placate the otherwise uncontrollable beast. “Like grapes.”

Tl'oghk'etnaeyen gave her fisted hand an appreciative look. “Could get dangerous to de-nut a barghest alone. Perhaps you’d let me tie him up first?”

“Ooh,” Shannon said, thinking of about two million things she’d like to do to a tied-up barghest who had insisted on burning a fortune’s worth of luxury items or face collateral damage. Then she made a face, remembering him breaking her house with his foot. “Too bad anything we use to tie him down would snap the moment he twitched.” As would, she realized, anything she tied him to.

“Not necessarily!” the dog-shaped-feylord said with a surge of excitement. He dug into his furry side and retrieved a luminescent green coil of what looked like fishing line with one hand. He dropped it into her palm, where it felt as light as air and had a vague buzz against her skin. “It’s called faewire,” Tl'oghk'etnaeyen continued as she squinted at it. “Completely unbreakable, unless you use a knife made of faespar. Only person who can untie it is the person who made the knot in the first place. Really handy to detain small-minded beasts with a criminal reflex.”

Shannon raised a brow as she pulled a feathery strand from the coil and moved it against her thumb, noticing the odd tingle in her fingers. “Could get interesting.”

Tl'oghk'etnaeyen nodded. “Very. Just wrap that baby around his wrists, tie it off, and do whatever you want to the poor sot. He’ll cut off his own hands before he gets out. Meanwhile, you can have him singing soprano and there wouldn’t be anything he could do about it.”

“I like,” Shannon said, grinning. “Think it would go around his fat meathead neck?”

“Oh for sure.” The feylord was obviously enjoying the idea of restraining the barghest as much as she was—probably because he had also spent the last two days being dragged around to caper to the bargest’s every stupid, mind-numbing Viking whim. “Struggle too hard and it cuts the jugular. We do it all the time in the Second Realm to punish criminals. I’d suggest hog-tying him, though. Makes it more interesting.”

She had to chuckle, imagining Barghest Training 101. She’d start with potty-training—apparently the beast thought he could casually piss on anything that wasn’t pissed on by another man first, but most especially and vigorously pee on things that had been pissed on by other men first—and move on to obedience and civility training, maybe even etiquette. Hell, with the proper incentive, maybe she could even teach him to use a fork… She idly glanced out at the barghest’s huge back as she handed the faewire back. “I wonder if they make gimp suits that big.”

“Could get one custom-made,” Tl'oghk'etnaeyen said, tucking it back against his furry brown side.

A bit surprised at the feylord’s comment, Shannon turned and frowned at him. “How do you know even know what a gimp suit is?”

Tl'oghk'etnaeyen shrugged casually. “I’ve been observing vampires for the last six years.”

Of course. Because vampires were kinky evil bastards with dungeons where they trapped people for lifetimes of sexual servitude and chronic psycho-emotional torture…

“Believe me,” Tl'oghk'etnaeyen growled, “that guy needs a little punishment.” He looked her over. “And maybe a riding crop and some high heels. You ever tried on a leather corset? I saw a bunch in your parents’ dungeon.”

Shannon made a face. In the background, the barghest was obliviously watching the column of flames.

To distract herself from the wanton destruction of property, Shannon quickly turned back to the feylord. “How about we get him one of those spike collars?” she said, remembering some of the other paraphernalia hanging from the walls. “We could get a matching one for his balls, if I don’t castrate him first.” She considered. “I’d probably castrate him first.”

“Uh,” the fisherman asked, looking nervously at her, “who are you talking to?”

“Shannon is completely uninteresting to you,” Tl'oghk'etnaeyen said to the man. “In fact, the odd way she talks to herself about castration and sexual domination makes you uncomfortable. You’re pretty sure she’s a schizophrenic dominatrix with a fetish for men your exact height and weight and you’re being overcome by the powerful urge to move quietly away and hope she doesn’t notice you. In fact, you start to wonder if perhaps she’s going to end this show by donning heels and corset randomly castrating guests with her stilettos. Fortunately, you manage your anxiety by eating the food and drinking the mead and not talking to us again.”

The man immediately turned away and started digging through the hors d’oeuvres, eating with renewed vigor.

Shannon was scowling at the feylord when he turned back to her. “Really?!” she demanded.

“You’re not the only one who’s bored,” Tl'oghk'etnaeyen said with a yawn. “He’s lucky I didn’t make him offer himself up for your riding crop.”

Shannon squinted at him. “I don’t have a riding crop.”

“Eh. We’ll get you one.”

“We?”

Tl'oghk'etnaeyen gave her a mischievous grin that was clear despite being translated through a mastiff’s droopy jowls.

“Wait wait wait,” Shannon said. “You like that stuff? Seriously?” She’d always thought, judging by the way vampires tortured people for fun, it was definitely off the table.

“Always wanted to try it out,” he said nonchalantly. “Saw you guys do it enough…” He gestured at her with a paw.

Shannon squinted at him. She had a vague idea how BDSM worked due to her morbid fascination with the ‘toys’ that kept showing up at her parents’ house throughout her childhood. “Top or bottom?”

The feylord’s slow, jowly smile was enough to make her nervous. “What do you think?”

Shannon thought about it. She’d read way too much literature on the subject in the last few years, trying to work out the root of her morbid BDSM fascination, never realizing that it was because she had caught her parents were eating people as they chained them down and fucked them and had subconsciously blocked out the memories. And, now that she remembered, the thought of such games now held a weird duality in her head, where on the one hand, she was curious and had spent several years idly fantasizing about them, but on the other, the horrors she had found in her parents’ dungeon had left the very thought of detaining someone—or being detained, now that she was on Everyone’s Most Wanted List—repugnant in her mind.

“It’s not repugnant if it’s fun,” Tl'oghk'etnaeyen said, leaning back against the gravel bank, looking thoroughly amused. “So what am I, vampire? Top or bottom?”

Squinting at him, she said, “Someone who can get anything he wants just by telling? You’re a bottom.”

He didn’t answer, but he did grin at her. “We’ll get you a corset.”

“So you’re a bottom?”

“Let’s just say…” The feylord coughed uncomfortably and glanced at the men milling at the tables, “The idea of a ball gag fascinates me. Sometimes…erm…painfully so.”

Which, Shannon realized, made so much sense. Kind of like the way powerful corporate executives hired a dominatrix to strip them, humiliate them, and restrain them, enabling their fantasies of submission that they couldn’t have in real life. Which, in essence, for someone whose every whim was instantly satisfied in the board room, made them feel more…human.

“You’re too intellectual about it,” Tl'oghk'etnaeyen said. “For the incredibly powerful, it’s like an itch that needs to be scratched. It’s just understood. The powerful have…needs.” He cocked his head at her. “At least it is in the Second Lands. There are whole professions devoted to pleasing my peers. We can’t die naturally, you know, and we rarely lose power or position, so the hierarchal structure is rather rigid. Once power is gained in my realm, it is absolute, and one can have it for millennia.” He yawned. “Breeds some interesting fetishes, for sure.”

“You like ball gags.”

The man bespelled to look like a dog coughed, and she was pretty sure if she could see his human face, he would have blushed. “That kind of lack of control is…unheard of for me…and I admit I’m…curious.”

Immediately, Shannon flushed. “So every time I tell you I’m gonna gag you and send you to the vet…”

“I almost want you to try,” Tl'oghk'etnaeyen said. Then he looked a bit sheepish. “Well…minus the vet visit part. I could definitely do without that.” He hesitated, cocking his head at Shannon. “What about you?”

Shannon immediately steeled her thoughts, knowing that the mind-reading gremlin would catch anything she happened to think by accident.

“Oh come on,” the feylord sighed. “I told you.”

Flushing, she allowed herself to consider the prospective roles, which she had never really considered outside full-leather bodysuits that covered everything because she was practical in her fantasies and her phobia of nakedness would have left her a sobbing, inconsolable wreck. But if they could find away around that… “Uh, well, I have sometimes wondered what it would be like to—”

Back in the water, the barghest swiveled, saw that their ‘guests’ were milling idly and not really partaking of the feast, and reddened until it looked like his head would explode. “Make merry!” he snapped. “Now!”

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Tl'oghk'etnaeyen muttered. Raising his voice, he waved a paw and snapped, “Make merry for our resident asshole!”

Immediately, the men at the tables started laughing and eating with gusto. Turning back to Shannon, Tl'oghk'etnaeyen said, “You were saying?” His gaze was intense and his curiosity was almost palpable. Hell, she could almost feel him reading her mind.

Shannon swallowed hard. “Um.” She flushed, suddenly aware of the fact she was a virgin discussing kinky sex with a stranger…

“We’re certainly not doing anything else productive,” he said, jerking a paw at the barghest’s latest stupidity and how they were trapped there, witness to a two million dollar inferno. “Besides. I kind of get the idea you don’t have anyone to talk about this stuff to…?”

Which was true enough. Even Shannon’s ‘girlfriends’ were hesitant to discuss anything in-depth with her, since Shannon had always been so careful not to let them know too much about her or her home life, following some innate fear of them ever meeting her parents. Parents, she realized now, that she probably subconsciously worried would eat them. But, as much as she wanted to talk to someone about her sex life—or lack thereof—the idea of telling a man…

“Keep in mind,” Tl'oghk'etnaeyen said, “I won’t even be thinking about going anywhere near you until someone takes your virginity first, so your secret is safe with me, vampire queen.” He pulled his jowls back in a grin. “Until you’ve lost your maidenhead, you might as well think of me as thoroughly and completely gay, because I am not interested.”

Shannon narrowed her eyes at him. “Like you think I’m diseased or something.”

“Oh, much worse than that.” Tl'oghk'etnaeyen chuckled.